


Warp and Weft

by dimircharmer, Fourier



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Abuse, Blood, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, F/M, Graphic descriptions of violence, Manipulation, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Trauma, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 18:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9839243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimircharmer/pseuds/dimircharmer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourier/pseuds/Fourier
Summary: Cassandra, forwards and backwards over the last five years at Whitestone.-What befell a lady of the castle, and how she recovers from it. Mind the tags.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing was born out of a mutual want to see more lady whump, and spiraled into one of the longest, most rewarding, most fun fic projects I've had the pleasure of writing, even if it was hard or painful or I jumped tenses back and forth all over the place. Thank you Lee <3

****“Cassandra.”

Her brother’s voice, steady and cold—his hand, outstretched, welcoming her forward. Towards the woman slumped against the stone wall, torn to pieces already—blood in her mouth, gaping wound in her side, eyes glossy and glazed.

Her footsteps echo in the silence of the hall. Her fingers go numb on the rapier’s grip.

When she approaches Delilah stirs, head lifting with every ounce of strength left in her broken body, eyes sharpening on Cassandra’s form.

She stares down, down into her eyes, down past them, down to the sickening black underneath as Delilah wheezes.

Her mouth falls open, her breath rattles, and—“You could have been my daughter.”

Cass feels something in her chest start to crack.

“No,” she says, for the first time in years.

It spreads through her ribs, through her arms, to her hands, the blade held out before her, Delilah’s face contorted in pain and anger and something like heartbreak and Cassandra thinks, as she watches, _good_.

“Cassandra is a de Rolo,” she says, words heavy on her tongue, unfamiliar syllables. “And you took them away from me.”

She breathes; she leans forward; she waits for Delilah to look into her eyes and _see_.

“And now,” she says, an echo in her mouth, stones shattering in her chest, “we’re taking everything away from you.”

Her heart splits open on the rapier blade.

…

…

...

**[now]**

 

Cassandra envies Percy for his ability to leave once the violence is over. Revolution, without the expectation to lead, in the aftermath. Toppling leaders was easy. Rebuilding is harder. For the third day in a row, for the third day after the Briarwoods are dead, Cassandra wakes in her bed, alone.

And then, there is a knock on her door, and she rolls over in her bed and groans.

“Lady Cassandra?” calls a voice on the other side.

“Yes, just a moment." 

“Lady Cassandra, we’re cleaning out Delilah Briarwood’s-” there is a hesitation, as Cassandra buttons herself into her dress.

“Her workshop?” Cassandra offers. 

“Yes,” the voice--Cassandra really should learn the names of the servants now that they were alive again--says. “You had said you wanted to start there because of-”

“The rot.” Cassandra finishes for him. “Yes. Would you be so kind as to inquire in town if anyone has lye for sale?”

“How much should I get?”

“As much as you can carry,” Cassandra says, rolling her shoulder, and opening her door, “And then make another trip.”

The serving boy, and he really is no more than a boy, startles at her appearance.

“My Lady?”

“At least two trips,” Cassandra says, pinning up her hair, “Perhaps more. What’s your name?”

“Simon,” he says.

Cassandra settles, spine straight, hands folded, head up, into the very picture of an aristocratic portrait. She knows, from long training and longer breeding, that she looks like every bust in the castle.

“Simon,” she says, “We’re going to burn them from the very stones of the castle. Can you help me do that? 

Simon hesitates, then nods. “Yes my lady.”

“Good man.”

…

**[then]**

 

He calls her to his study. Or—a dead girl does, usually, vacant eyes and open throat, note in hand which she holds out with a rigid arm. It’s a variation on a theme, usually: a summons, a request to join him, an excuse for why she’s being asked there.

Her heart used to pound in her chest as she walked to meet him. Now she just feels it settling behind her ribs, heavy and leaden.

She walks slowly, though, still. As if it’s a game. How long can she wander through the interlacing hallways of Whitestone Castle, traveling up and down sets of stairs, until she winds her way towards the dimly-lit study in the far interior of the manor. How many steps does it take—she counted, once, nearly a thousand if she takes the longest route—and how many minutes, seconds, breaths can she make him wait.

But she ends up at the barred wooden door, eventually: always cracked open, enough for her to slip through, to see him sitting there with pen in hand and papers before him, lit by the dim lamplight around the windowless room.

Sylas sees her and grins, razor-pointed teeth exposed. “Cassandra.”

(Her mother used to have a clock with a door in it, and from the door each hour would spill a ballerina. She would twirl, bend at the waist and snap up, dance to the music of the clock-bell until it stopped ringing and she was yanked back into the dark. Delilah hated it; destroyed it, Cass assumes, as she hasn’t seen it since she moved back in.

She thinks of it, though, as she gathers her skirts in her hands, crosses one ankle over the other, and sweeps into a practiced curtsy.)

“Lord Briarwood.”

He stands, and sidesteps—beckons her over with a flick of his wrist. She walks to him like a wind-up doll, steps mechanical, perfectly placed. This one takes six steps, eight if she’s hesitant—but he’s delighted when she’s hesitant, so she tries not to be.

She faces the desk, fingers gripping the edge, and stares down at the papers he’s working on. His hand settles on her hip, guides her closer to the desk; the edge of the wood digs into her stomach and she grits her teeth, clenches her fists.

“Delilah and I have been invited to Emon,” he says, gesturing at an envelope with a broken seal. “You’ve proven yourself a clever girl time and time again, Cassandra, _especially_ when it comes to interstate politics. Would you like to read over my acceptance to the gracious invitation?”

It’s his turn for games, now, she knows.

She scans the letter, catching a word or two here and there, focusing mostly on the black of the pen, the still-wet ink, the hasty handwriting. A draft of a later letter, she’s sure. He doesn’t expect this one sent out.

“Well-said, my Lord,” she finally says, and it feels flat and tinny in her throat.

Sylas moves behind her, hand still on her hip, stomach laid against her back, and she slowly uncurls her fingers from the edge of the desk.

“Thank you, darling,” he drawls, close to her ear. “Be good now, hmm?”

His hand clasps around the back of her neck and she gasps, and she hates that she still gasps, even knowing it’s coming, hates the chuckle that it gets from him, hates the bile she can taste on her tongue. He shoves her head forwards, down down _down_ onto the desk, and she’s fast enough to only-barely catch herself, hands curling limply by her head as he holds her there, weight against her spine, foot kicking apart her legs.

“Cassandra,” he breathes, as he lifts her skirts. “Whitestone’s prodigal daughter, aren’t we. So clever. So—so _versatile_ , that mind of yours.”

She stares at the inkwell on the edge of the desk, at the grain of the wood—she’s memorized what turns it takes, the cracks and variants in the finishing.

“I never tire of you, girl, you know,” Sylas says, almost fondly, and pulls her undergarments down to her knees before sliding his fingers into her cunt.

They’re cold—they’re always cold, and she’s gotten used to it, but it’s always a shift, Delilah to him, human to _not_ , and it’s strange the way the temperature changes anything at all but it does.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, and his thumb presses against her clit and she squirms, in spite of herself.

He fingers her for minutes, she thinks—she doesn’t count for this, anymore—and she always wonders what he gets out of it. If he just likes the power of it, having her spread out on his hands. If he likes the way she looks as he does it. If he just gets off on it, somehow.

She thinks maybe some of it is the steadying breath she takes, when he pulls out of her—he certainly laughs, sometimes, when she does, like a private joke between the two of them, like they both know what’s coming.

His hands grip tight on her hips as he fits his cock inside her, and her hands curl into fists, and as he pants and rocks back and forth, her hips stuttering against the wood, she looks at the wood finishing and the divots and the half-moon crescents of nail marks from when she had the energy for a thing like that.

( _It used to hurt_ , she reminds herself. _That’s why you did that. It used to hurt_.)

Cassandra lets her mind drift back to counting—to the specks on the wall, to the ink spots on the page, to the servants she can see ambling by the crack in the door. Twenty-five; four; eight. She counts buttons on his coat in the corner. She counts, in her mind’s eye, the steps it will take her back to her room. She counts anything but the seconds, the tick-tick-tick of the clock against the corner of his room.

When Sylas leans down over her back again she breathes a shaky breath out, turns her forehead towards the wood. It’s over, or near-enough to over—she feels his teeth scraping over a patchwork of old scarring, finding a junction, somewhere to pierce and feed and _there_ —

His fangs pierce into her skin and she feels the blood draining from her veins, the sting dampened back by years of scarring, and she thinks _this used to hurt, too_.

He drinks, and he comes in her, wet and warm against her thighs, and she lets her palms relax back to flat on the wood as his teeth withdraw from her skin.

“Thank you, darling,” he says, voice deeper, louder than before. She does her best to stand—not as dizzy as she sometimes is, just the swelling in her neck around the bite, the shaking of her thighs as she pulls her clothes back into place.

She turns as he finishes tucking himself back into his own uniform. He wipes her blood off the corner of his mouth with a thumb and sucks it off between his teeth.

“You’re free to go, my dear,” he says.

She curtsies before she leaves. 

…

**[now]**

 

Within weeks, the most obvious signs of the Briarwoods occupation of her childhood home have been scoured out. Delilah’s chambers have been cleaned- the very acid she demanded made have eaten her enchantments from the stone. The hooks on which she hung corpses have been given to the castle blacksmith, to be melted down and turned to nails and spades and shovels once more. The dead have been returned to their graves, those that could be identified, and gravedigging might soon, optimistically, no longer be a full time job for the labour force.

Cassandra, for her part, while not trying to organize the city, has been busy throwing open every window in the castle. It has been overcast for years, in Whitestone, and with every wooden shutter that slams open against the walls, with every crisp breeze that whips through the halls, with every beam of unfiltered sunlight that makes the Whitestone glow once more, the castle feels more a place for the living again.

She has to call a stone mason, to disassemble the wall they had constructed in the master bedroom, where the tall lancet windows once filtered thick coloured light into the space. She does her work in the bedroom for two days, using (once her mothers, once Delilah’s now her own) the vanity as if it was a proper writing desk. She stares at the masons sometimes for hours at a time, as they slowly remove the tapestry over the stone, disassemble the newer masonry brick by brick, slowly flood the chamber with light.

She’s finishing checking the stocks for the winter (improved, since that druid that Percival brought with him performed whatever ritual it was that brought life back to the land) when the mason gets off his ladder for the final time, his apprentices dismissed for the evening, and dusts his hands. 

“My lady,” he says.

Cassandra looks up, and lets herself smile at the sight of the mountains beyond the window, bathed in the thick orange and gold light of the sunset. “My thanks.”

He smiles at her, “If I may say, my lady, it’s good to be working for a de Rolo again.”

“You may,” she replies, “It is good to be able to call myself a de Rolo again. Were you one of those they used in the excavation?”

The mason runs a hand through his hair, and replaces his cap. “Not me, no. The rest of the guild, I think, ended up attached to the walls down there, but I was one of the ones they used to brick up the castle in the first place. Can’t get skill out of a set of dead hands, I suppose.” 

“No,” Cassandra says, “I suppose not. Have you been down there since?”

“I have, my Lady” he replies, “Hell of a thing, what’s under there. Or, what’s not under there I should say.” 

“Oh?”

“It’s not something to sneeze at, to hollow out a foundation and leave the structure standing, if I may say so, my lady.”

“Yes,” Cassandra says, “I suppose it must be. Should I be worried about walking up one morning and finding that half my castle has collapsed on itself?”

“Nah,” he says, scratching at his beard, “they knew what they were doing, I’ll give ‘em that much. Castle’s sturdy as it ever was. And I would know- it was my ancestors that built the thing!”

Cassandra puts her quill down and turns to regard him fully. “Really." 

“Oh yes,” he says, and ran his hand along the now-restored frame of the window, “we still have the plans, somewhere. My pa showed them to me when I was barely cut from ma’s apron strings. And now I’ve helped you return to the master bedroom.”

Cassandra looks at the room again, even with the holes punched back through the walls, and tries to remember if her parents had ever invited her into their chambers, while they still lived and walked the halls. She wonders if the stain she occasionally saw beneath the thick rug on the floor was her mother’s own, from the night of the slaughter, or her own, from when Sylas was sloppy, or some other nameless de Rolo centuries past hidden by time in the castle’s stones. She tries to remember if she _can_ remember anyone but Sylas and Delilah reigning dominion over these chambers.

“I don’t think I’ll take it, actually,” Cassandra says, “Percival is nominally first in line, after all, and I wouldn’t want to be rude. Besides, I’ve always found the room quite drafty.”

The mason laughs, and tips his cap to her. “As the lady of the castle says.”

 

…

**[then]**

 

“Again!” Sylas demands, and swings his sword- unsheathed and menacing- at her. Cassandra leaps back, catching the blade on the edge of her dagger, pushing it just aside enough to turn a cleaving blow into a miss. 

She’s breathing heavy, chest heaving, as her feet scuttle across the sand of the training yard. Sylas doesn’t even look winded. He spins his sword, idly, one handed, as she settles back into her stance. When she does, rapier up, dagger ready at her waist, he adopts a more human position, legs spread and stance heavy, two hands around the hilt of his broadsword. 

“Again,” He says, and swings at her.

He swings at her at exactly the speed he did before- though the blow this time is swung at her neck; requiring her to duck under it and step behind him as he finishes the swing. She lunges with her dagger as she does, not even catching a piece of his linen practice shirt. 

“Your rapier, Cassandra!” He says, taking a swing at her legs in discipline, catching her shin win the flat of his blade and making her wince, “You’re at a reach disadvantage already, and you’re not inside my guard, don’t get closer!”

She scrambles out of the way of his next blow, no grace or artistry, just speed as he swings back towards her middle. She settles back into her stance again, and he grins as he circles her, prowling, watching her footwork as she turns to keep him in her sight.

“Good girl,” he tells her, “not two weeks ago you would have stepped over yourself to face me.”

She readjusts her grip on her dagger, holding it in front of her in a block. Sylas grins, and Cassandra can vaguely, out of the corner of her eye, see Delilah settle herself on one of the stone ledges with a teacup. Cassandra is never less afraid of the pair of them than when Sylas has Craven Edge drawn, when shadows dripped down his hands and he swung a blade that reeked of magic at her.

If they wanted to kill her, she would be dead. He never more than taps her with the blade, never drawing blood, a full force swing stopped with unnatural precision the split second it meets her skin, no matter the shadows grasping at her skin, when it gets close. He never even bruises her, when they do this, encourages her to swing at full strength at him.

This, circling one another in the sandy practice yard in one of the castle’s courtyards, feet crunching in the sand, Cassandra’s breath steaming in the cold, acidic fumes drifting gently around her feet, is the most she’s allowed outside. Sylas makes sure to bring her out nearly every other day, to let her get some fresh air and exercise so she won’t wilt, he says, like a cut flower.

She’s lost the last of her baby fat, doing this; cheekbones sharpening, arms firming, de Rolo jawline emerging from the softness of childhood.

“Again,” he says, and makes the same swing- level with her neck. This time, knowing what was coming, Cass steps into and under the attack, _inside_ his guard this time, under his arm not his sword, and pivots, driving her rapier through his middle with a yell.

The world seems to halt- Sylas still in the follow through of his blow, Cassandra frozen in her lunge. Sylas lets go of his sword, and reaches around to the small of his back, where Cassandra has stuck her rapier so deep it must be extending from his front. His grasping fingers meet her own on the hilt, and Cassandra still hasn’t moved. 

Sylas begins to laugh and straightens, pulling the blade from his body from behind. He turns to face her just in time for her to see the point disappear from his front, retreating behind a tiny pierced hole in his work shirt. He discards the rapier, letting it fall in the sand behind him. He takes a step towards Cassandra, still laughing, and hoists her in the air. 

“Magnificent!” He declares, and spins her, “Clever girl, quicker as a fox, well done!”

He laughs again, and tosses her, catching her behind her knees and shoulders, collapsing her into herself, and presses a kiss to her hairline. 

Cassandra can hear Delilah laugh, high and clear, across the courtyard, as Sylas sets her back on her feet, and grasps her by the chin, gently, bending to meet her eye..

“Truly,” he says, “well _done_. We have found something special in you, girl, and wouldn't let you go for the world.”

He looks- fond, almost, as he stares at her. Proud.

He releases her, and fetches her rapier from the sand, offering it to her hilt first.

“Again?” He asks.

Cassandra takes the blade, and settles back into her stance.

“Again.”

...

**[now]**

 

Keeper Yennen doesn't like her, anymore.

He did once, she remembers vaguely, through the knotted, manufactured haze the Briarwoods left her memories, she thinks she remembers him ruffling her hair, and hopping off a stool, having check ups with the old cleric.

Yennen now stares her down across the table, glaring under bushy white eyebrows, glowing slightly in the soft candlelight of the council chambers.

“Is there anything else the temple and congregation needs, keeper?”

“Nearly two hundred of its members returned alive.”

Cassandra meets his gaze, level across the table.

“I didn't intend to continue Delilah’s work in that department, Keeper, but if you think it would be best for the people. 

Keeper Yennen snorts, as she knew he would, and turns away, as she suspected he might. 

“If that’s all then? Cassandra says, looking at the rest of the council, “Good. I call this meeting adjourned; until we meet again.” 

The council started to pack up, wrestling with rolls of parchment and speaking softly with one another. Keeper Yennen remained rooted in his seat. Cassandra watched the rest of them leaving before turning back to him.

“Is there something you wished to address with me in private Keeper?” Cassandra asked mildly.

“I don't know how you sleep at night,” Keeper Yennen spits at her, “sitting in the throne as though you didn't sell out your own citizens to their conquerors.”

Cassandra sat back down, and rests her chin in one hand. “I don't actually, most nights, not that I think it's relevant to the point you’re making.”

“You betrayed us!” He snaps, “We healed you, we nursed you back to health we needed you and-” 

“You put a dagger in my hands when I was fourteen and grieving and expected me to lead,” Cassandra says, more snappish than she intended, “you needed a figurehead and a martyr and you sent me up to the castle like a lamb to slaughter at fifteen, keeper, you don't get to claim the high ground.”

He glares at her.

“You betrayed us, Cassandra.”

Cassandra looked away from him, and started picking at a puddle of wax with her thumb nail.

“And what, pray tell, would you have expected me to have done differently,” she asks, “with Sylas reading my every letter and the both of them capable of enchanting me to say or do whatever they pleased? Hmm? Thrown myself off a tower like my sister? Tried to hang myself a second time to see if I got lucky?" 

The keeper sighs at her, “I would not have expected you to betray us.”

“I survived,” Cassandra says, “I will not apologize for that. Do not pretend I am the only person in this room who did terrible things to do so, over those years. You ordered a girl to lead a rebellion for you, and sent her into the Lion’s den, keeper. You have lost every right to judge the woman who survived it.”

The keeper sneers, and rises to leave, shuffling in ancient robes, gold glinting in the candle light.

“And Keeper?” She adds. Waits to see him look up, before continuing in the iciest tones she can muster, feels Delilah creeping into her voice as she does so, “the proper form of address is My Lady, in these walls and any other. You cannot condemn more for betrayal of my people and rob me of title to rule them in the same breath. You are dismissed, Keeper Yennen.”

Keeper Yennen looks tired, suddenly, almost apologetic “My lady, I did not mean-”

“ _Dismissed,_ Keeper.”

He leaves her in the empty council chambers, kept company only by guttering candles and the knife at her waist.

…

**[then]**

 

Guests in the castle were once a cause for celebration, for music, for a tossing open of the gates and the hosting of a great feast. The de Rolos were known, once as renowned and generous hosts, as the throwers of balls- Lord and Lady de Rolo used to bow out of their bedroom to allow the guests to sleep in the master bedchambers.

Guests now are not voluntarily. They still sleep in the master bedchamber, are still the cause of a feast. Cassandra still greets them at the gates.

It was Lord Briarwoods turn to pick a guest, this round, she can tell, as Lord and Lady Briarwood wind their way up the path to the castle, arm in arm with a young girl between them.

She can tell it’s Sylas’s choice because the peasant between the two of them is a slender, dark haired, feminine thing, and she is terrified.

Delilah prefers variety in her pickings; young men, redheads, blonds, shorter, taller- and Delilah prefers to charm them, for them to be giddy with the invitation to the palace.

Cassandra is pettily, guiltily, vindicated every time one of them looks as scared as she is.

They reach her, where she has been told to wait in the doorway, and Cassandra curtsies. “My lord and lady,” she says, “happy to see your return.”

Delilah coos. The girl is shaking, eyes darting frantically between the bloody scabs in Cassandra’s neck and Sylas’s teeth, exposed in a wide grin.

“Cassandra, darling,” Delilah says, sweeping in to take her hands, “Why, Sylas and I were wandering around town, and we found this lovely girl, and thought you might need a chambermaid. What was your name dear?" 

The girl stammers, and Sylas answers for her, hand resting heavy on the back of her neck. Cass can tell even from here that he’s squeezing.

“She said her name was Alexandra, wasn’t that right?”

Alexandra- perhaps a year older than Cassandra is, if that, nods and licks her lips nervously. “Yes my lord.”

“Alexandra,” Sylas says warmly, “We’re so happy to have someone to host for in the castle.”

Sylas is taller than her by easily a head and a half, standing close enough to her that his legs brush the back of her skirts.

Cassandra curtsies to Alexandra. “I am sure you will perform admirably in your duties.”

Alexandra is hyperventilating.

“Oh, come now,” Delilah says, and hooks her arm decorously through Alexandra’s, “We haven’t even led you on the tour yet! What poor hosts have we been, I apologize Cassandra dear, you must excuse us.”

The girl, frozen between Sylas and Delilah, looks pleadingly towards Cassandra, as though she has any power to stop or even delay what all four of them know is about to happen.

“Of course,” Cassandra says, “If you have no further need of me, I think I’ll retire for the evening, then.”

Sylas and Delilah look at each other, over Alexandra’s head, and Cassandra’s heart sinks heavy and leaden into her gut. They have not yet demanded her presence, while they took one of the townsfolk to bed with them, have not yet made an outsider watch as they had their way with her, had not yet made her watch as another girl kicked and screamed with the energy Cassandra no longer had to spare. She has so far been taken apart in front of and for the Briarwood’s eyes only,their prized and private doll, and with every guest they brought back to the castle she wondered if this would be the time this final inconsequential modesty was torn from her. It is such a silly thing to dread, with everything else that they had done to her, but dread she does, hot and heavy in her gut each time they bring a plaything home to play hosts.

“Not tonight, darling, go ahead off to bed,” Delilah says eventually, and Cassandra hides the relief on her face by dropping into another curtsy.

“Thank you, my lady,” Cassandra demurs, and turns to leave without meeting Alexandra’s eye.

That night is the first in weeks she spends alone in her own bed. When the screaming starts, down the hallway, she curls smaller in her sheets and pulls a pillow over her ears.

…

**[now]**

 

“It’s always nice to see you back alive.”

Percival laughs as he sits down in the chair before her. It’s cute, the way he thinks she’s joking. 

“It’s nice to be back alive,” he tells her. “Really, it is.”

He says it as if it’s a surprise; and she guesses she’s not really shocked by that, honestly. She knows still very little about who or what Percy became, in the five years they lost one another, but whatever it was, it ate at him not unlike the way her years did her.

But she called him here for a reason, not to wax on about their childhood trauma--that’s another day’s work. She clears her throat and slides a parchment towards him, carefully penned with her signature still wet at the bottom. 

“What’s this?” he asks, even as he reads over the letter itself. 

She smiles a little, despite herself, as she answers. “Contracts and royal orders, passing _de jure_ power from one hand to another while retaining all previous titles and privileges thereof.”

He looks at her. She can’t read him, anymore, not like she used to. 

“I’m signing over my job and political position to you,” he asks.

“Not the position,” she says. “I made that very clear. Just the job. And the royal funds.”

He reads over it again. She watches the way his mouth works over the words, hears him hum and haw at a sentence here and there. He does make an effort, she’ll give him that.

“You don’t have to do this, Cassandra,” he says finally.

She takes a breath. “I do,” she says, and before he can answer, “because someone’s got to run Whitestone while you’re saving the world--and believe me, I appreciate it, I do happen to like this world, despite our disagreements--but I’d prefer to have the proper legal backing to do so. Hence. The document.”

She studies his face. The changes are subtle: a crooked eyebrow, a mouth pressed harder into a line. He looks in agreement with her, that much is for sure, but under it is… something else, more difficult to place.

It’s the feeling she gets when she catches glimpse of his scars, under his coat--not the ones from adventuring, but the surgically-precise cuts on his arms, the acid burns on the back of his neck, the Y-shaped incision that stretches to his collarbones. It’s the feeling she gets when she realizes he knows, in some form or another, what it feels like to be torn open and sewed back up.

“You’re very different than I remember, you know,” he says, soft. “And in other ways entirely the same.”

Ah, right. That’s it. Regret.

She runs her fingers over half-crescent indentations left in the lacquer.

“The same to you,” she says, and she means it.

He dips the quill in ink and presses it to the parchment; she watches him form the looping letters of his name, long enough to fill two lines, and does her best to let the smile building in her chest make its way up to her mouth.

…

**[then]**

 

Sylas drinks from her—

He drinks too much this time, she thinks, more than he meant to and her head swims, the walls tilt, but he sends her back anyway, stumbling through the hall with fingertips against the stone, the stone, the stone.

“Oh, _darling_ ,” comes the voice, Delilah, in her ear, her hand on her waist, “you look positively awful,” she says, “come to bed.”

Cassandra fights the ocean tide, the swelling black that pulls her down, while Delilah half-carries half-drags her to bed, lays her out with her arms over her head, her face to the ceiling, open.

_Vesper_ , comes a thought, like the clear ringing of a bell, _liked butterflies. Had pins for them_.

The bed dips where Delilah kneels, where her hand braces itself by Cassandra’s hip, and Cassandra blinks—forces her eyes back open—looks down even as the image blurs.

“Relax,” she coos. Her hand is warm, soft, too much pressure. “My dear husband has taken such a toll on you, hasn’t he?”

Her fingers—her hands, the feeling of them—Cass kicks her legs, pointlessly, achingly, and Delilah laughs somewhere in her chest and Cass feels hollowed-out.

“Go on now, darling,” the voice again, in a sea somewhere, far away and too close.

Cass fights the currents; she fights the pull, the swelling wrongness in her veins, the scorch marks across her flesh that Delilah ignites like kindling.

“Come for me, Cassandra,” she demands, and Cass drowns.

And her body is not has not been will never be _hers_ , she realizes, in the instant her brain screams _no_ and Delilah laughs, they have taken that from her, too, with her family her castle her home--

The last thing she sees, before her vision fades black, is Delilah’s smile, serene and satisfied.

 

...

**[now]**

She figures, three months after the Briarwoods are gone, it might be time to see a cleric.

Her brother’s friend stays behind the rest of them often enough that she’s gotten to know her—a tiny gnome with almost white-gold hair, spending most of her time in the temple. Cassandra’s heard the way the children talk about her—with easy smiles, warmth and reverence in their voices. Miss Pike, the Sarenrae lady. Miss Pike, who lets you wear her gloves if you’re good. Miss Pike, who always has candies in her pockets.

Cass values endorsements of children a fair amount more than anyone else in the city; after all, they’re too young to be fooled, for the most part.

So she asks Pike, late in the afternoon in Sarenrae’s temple, if she has a moment to spare—time for a consult, sometime later in the week, a physical exam if she’s comfortable with that—and Pike approves with a smile and an eager nod and tells her to come by her room in the castle in a few days.

And so there Cass stands, knuckles pressed to the wood, mustering the courage to raise her fist and —

“Get over yourself, Cassandra,” she murmurs, and knocks.

It opens after just a moment, and Pike stands there clad in soft robes—not the weathered armor she usually wears, even in the temple, as if she’s ready for battle at a moment’s notice. She looks smaller like this—and she is small, the top of her head barely to Cassandra’s chest, but now she seems almost like a child.

“Come on in, Lady Cassandra,” she says brightly, and steps aside.

The room is brightly lit, with candles and torchlight filling the bedroom. The bed is cleared off, stripped and fitted with plain white sheets—fear, for a second, rises in Cass’s chest when she thinks of laying herself down and allowing Pike to look at her, but she presses it down, down, down, into a box with the rest of it.

“If you could take your dress off we could get started,” Pike says, and it comes rushing back, like an unstoppable force.

“Yes,” Cass says, hears herself say, and her hands shake. They travel up her shoulders, to the laces at her back, the material hiding the flesh under the fabric, and her fingers clench and curl around the ribbon and she—

**[then]**

“—Oh, _yes,_ that’s it, love,” Delilah murmurs, low in her ear, as she slides the dress off Cassandra’s shoulders. “Look how stunning you are, hmm? All the trappings of youth on that pretty little face of yours.”

Cass looks where Delilah points her: into the mirror placed in front of the two of them, into the soft face of a girl barely seventeen with eyes wide and confused, into Delilah’s face behind her with bright-white teeth and all sharp edges.

“Sweet Cassandra,” Delilah coos, and she slides the dress down to Cass’s hips, exposes her chest, her breasts, to the soft curve of her stomach—“Don’t look away, darling, watch carefully, now.”

Delilah takes her left breast in hand, squeezes too hard too hard—and when Cass yelps she laughs, her other hand creeping around her hip, down, down, beneath the dress around her hips, under the clothes still covering her waist, and Cass cries when she buries her fingers between her folds and Delilah whispers, in her ear, _Keep watching, darling, keep watching—_

**[now]**

—lets the dress slip off her shoulders and pool around her ankles on the floor, stepping out of it with her back straight and her heart hammering in her chest.

“Thanks!” Pike says brightly. “Lay down, if you’re comfortable?”

Cassandra almost laughs— _comfortable_ , what a fucking joke—but she doesn’t: she sits down, despite her shaking hands, and she breathes.  

…

**[then]**

 

She was expecting this. She tries to remind herself of that, as she rises and crosses the library to meet Sylas and Delilah where they’re sitting on the couch. She was expecting to be called on, eventually, as one of the few remaining warm blooded living things in the castle, for Sylas’s benefit. She reminds herself, again standing in front of them this time, that this was inevitable. It doesn’t stop her hands from shaking.

Delilah says it so casually, too. They had taken to spending evenings in the library together, when there weren’t more pressing matters to take care of (Cassandra tried, every night she wasn't summoned to the library, not to think about what those pressing matters were) and Delilah often asked if she could tell them what she was reading, darling, or would you like some wine, darling, or come join us on the couch by the fire, darling, instead of staying all alone in your chair.

Only tonight it was “Sylas is feeling a little hungry, darling, would you be so sweet as to help him with that?”

Cassandra was at least smart enough to know that her answer didn't matter in the slightest, so she said “of course,” and crossed the room to meet them.

She hesitates, in front of them. She can’t think of a way to do this that didn't  feel painfully intimate. Sylas doesn’t make so much as a move to help her either; sitting stock still, teeth bared, hungry and grinning on the couch.

He apparently, eventually, tires of her dithering, because he grabs her by the wrist and yanks her to his lap. It's better than some alternatives she imagined, she reminds herself, as her heart quickens in her chest, beating against her ribs like a bird too stupid to realize it had been caged. Sitting on his lap, knees straddling him at least had the benefits of not being kneeling on the floor, or lying down somewhere with him above her.

“Thank you, girl,” Sylas purrs, wrapping one massive hand around the small of her back, pulling her closer. The other found its way to the hair at her neck- first pushing it out of his way, and then burying itself up to the knuckles in it to tug her head to the side.

“Don't fuss now,” he warns her, and out of the very corner of her eye she sees his fangs glisten, a split second before they graze her skin.

She shivers, despite herself, and she can feel more than hear Sylas chuckle.

There was a moment that hung in the air, the single breath where Sylas’s breath was hot on her neck, as Delilah shifts on the couch with her wine. It seems to last a lifetime, that split second hung like a crystal vase dropped but not yet shattered, as everyone watched with baited breath.

And then, Sylas sinks his teeth into her neck and the moment shattered into a million pieces.

He’s _cold_ and _intrusive_ and shockingly horrific, a shooting pain that only starts in her neck and radiated with a burning cold down through her shoulder, and further stretching its fingers right into her heart. 

She yells, she’s sure, and she slams her hands against his chest, scrambling at the golden buttons she finds there, and she feels at least one of them pull free in her grasp.

It’s terrible and invasive, and the hand on her back hauls her back in as she pushes against him, and as the cold makes her whimper, when she thinks there’s nothing- not the arrows in her back, not the cold of snow on bare feet, not the pain her mother must have felt when Sylas ran her through- _nothing_ that could be worse than this, he starts to actually pull.

She screams, then, and she can feel her voice rattle against the teeth in her neck, her body betrays her and she can feel (she didn't know it was something she was aware of until it was _wrong)_ her blood running the wrong direction towards his fangs. She clenches her fists, curls her toes, clamps her thighs, tries to focus on anything but the all encompassing physical horror that has suddenly become her entire world, any sensation to detract from Sylas in her neck.

After- some amount of time, she’s not sure how long, she felt the fangs disengage from their lock in her neck, and start to pull out again. She whimpers, as they passed the whole in the skin they made, on their way out. Sylas releases his grip on her back, pulls his fingers out of her hair, and as she collapses back against the arm of the couch, she can see Delilah hand him a handkerchief, and him wipe decorously at his mouth. 

“Thank you, darling, Sylas gets so unpleasant when he hasn't eaten,”Delilah says, and hands her a second cloth, “here, lovely girl, use this. We wouldn’t want to stain that lovely dress of yours, now would we?” 

Cassandra takes it (when did her hands start shaking,) and presses it against her neck. She can feel her pulse, still hummingbird fast, beating against the holes in her neck.

“If that’s all,” she says, and she hated how tinny her voice sounded, how it shook, even in her own ears, “I think I’d like to go to bed for the evening.”

Delilah sighs. “Oh, I suppose darling, one must get their rest as a young lady, after all.”

“Thank you,” Cassandra says, and she makes it all the way to the hall before she starts running.

 

…

**[now]**

 

There’s… work she should be doing. She knows that. Cass turns on her side under her covers, and pulls them tighter around herself, wishes they were thicker, heavier, warmer. That her cocoon enveloped her entirely, that her hair didn’t spill out like ink across the pillow sheets.

There’s work she has to do do. She should get up. Instead, she wraps her arms around her face and digs her nails into her scalp, hard enough that they would have left divots, had it not been covered by hair. She scratches at the back of her neck, feels her nails catch on the patchwork of rough and ruined skin that her neck is, rakes them hard enough to leave lines despite the difficulties.

Someone’s knocking on the door. She wonders how long they’ve been there. 

“Hmm?” 

A voice warbles back through, and it takes a great deal of effort to parse the words. She has things to do today, it tells her. Someone’s expecting to meet with her.

Cassandra thinks for a moment, through the deep, deep fog enveloping her brain, and pushes her way momentarily to the surface. “No.” she says.

“Sorry?” the voice on the other side of the door says.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Cass says. “I’ll be here today. Please don’t come get me unless something important is on fire.”

“Oh.” There’s some shuffling. “Should I- um, send some food up?" 

“Mm.” Cass says, “Yes. I might eat today.”

“My lady?" 

“Mm.”

“I’m only asking because it’s mid afternoon.”

“Yes.” Cass says vaguely, “I think I’m going back to bed now.”

“Alright.”

The sound fades, and Cassandra stares blankly at the door, for a few moments, distracted by the whirl of its grain, by the square nail heads sticking from the surface. Her hands flex absentmindedly around the blankets she brought with her when she sat up, wrapped around her like a downy shawl. She pulls them more firmly around herself, and wedges her body into the corner formed by the headboard and the wall, shoving her bare feet hard into the mattress, to feel the wall press against her shoulder blades. She pulls her legs up again, curls into the smallest ball she can manage in the corner, and just lets herself disappear again.

 

…

**[then]**

 

Cassandra’s frantic, hysterical sobs, badly muffled in her fist, are interrupted by a creak of wood and the light of the corridor.

“Oh, darling, that’s where you had gotten off to." 

Delilah Briarwood stands framed in the light of the closet door. Cassandra keeps her hand over her mouth and presses herself further into the corner- Lady Briarwood tutts, like one would at a reluctant pet. 

“Oh, don’t do that darling, come let me see you,” she gestures for Cassandra to come closer, and then steps into the closet herself when she refuses

“Come now, Cassandra, even if you don’t like me yet, you have to admit that there’s nothing to be gained by me hurting you now.”

Cassandra sniffs, and tries, ineffectively, to scrub the tears from her eyes.

“Oh you poor thing, have you been crying?”

Delilah takes another step towards her, close enough that Cassandra has to tilt her head to meet her eye, close enough she could feel the brush of Delilah’s skirts against her own. She takes Cassandra’s face in her hands, rings glinting on every finger, and appears genuinely sad at the tears she finds there, tilting Cassandra’s head back and forth in her grasp. She rubs one thumb across Cassandra’s cheek, and Cassandra shudders involuntarily. Delilah tilts her head, curious.

“Now, what’s the reason for these, darling? You’re out of that miserable little town again, back in your castle. We’ve offered to raise you with us, dear heart. You have a new family now.”

Cass’s shoulders hitch without her permission, and another sob bursts from her throat.

“Oh, darling thing,” Delilah pulls Cass into her shoulder, wrapping one arm around Cassandra’s middle, trapping her arms at her sides. Cass turns her face slightly, allows her to head go where Delilah pushes it; crying into her shoulder, “You’re adjusting, dear, you’re lonely. It’s alright, I’m here for you.”

Delilah begins, stroking her hair, and it’s the first piece of affectionate human contact Cassandra has received in over a year.

“Do you know what my mother did, dear thing, when I cried like this?”

It is hard to imagine Delilah Briarwood as a child, or what her mother could have possibly been like, to inspire her to grow up and slaughter noble houses and raise the dead, so Cassandra doesn’t answer. Delilah doesn’t seem to expect a response, because she continues, stroking Cassandra’s hair:

“She would simply invite me to bed with her, and we’d sleep all curled together. Doesn’t that sound nice, darling girl, as something for a new mother to do for her lonely daughter?”

Cassandra takes a deep breath, and clears her throat, tries to offer a reason not to, anything- “I really don’t-”

“Oh, nonsense, no excuses,” Delilah says, as she presses a kiss to Cassandra’s hairline, “I simply won’t take no for an answer.”

…

**[now]**

Castle Whitestone is, and has always been, the home of the de Rolos.

…

**[then]**

She feels Delilah’s hands, soft but insistent, smoothing over her tangled hair as she shakes.

…

**[now]**

No matter who else claims the land, whatever corruption runs deep through the soil, whatever lays beneath the floor, dark and all-consuming, the walls, the cornices, the parapets belong to them.

…

**[then]**

She hears the rebellion torn apart around her, hears her blood in her ears, hears her own screaming as they grab her by the throat.

…

**[now]**

 To _her_.

…

**[then]**

 

A cleric patching her up in a secluded alleyway; scars in her back; an ember in her heart, burning, burning, _burning_ \--

…

**[now]**

 

She walks, sometimes, through the castle, her fingertips tracing the cracks in the walls, the warp and weft of the stone.

…

**[then]**

 

And she runs and she runs and Percival and the blood on his chest the blood in his hair her feet frozen and raw in the snow and _pain and burning and the arrows in her back and white and black and--_  

**…**  

**[now]**

 

She knows every inch of this castle; her home for years, her prison for many more, though sometimes she doesn’t know when one started and the other ends. She doesn’t quite know whether it’s ever switched back.

She knows this castle, its secrets and its scandals. 

She knows the story of its halls, the things it’s seen, the things it looked away from.

She thinks she can feel it sometimes, a pulse beneath the woven stone.

…

**[then]**

 

“Cassandra!”

Her mother’s voice, ringing throughout the halls--Cassandra, come to dinner, Cassandra, come downstairs, Cassandra, the guests will be here soon.

“Race you,” Ludwig says, tugging at her skirts, and she rolls her eyes because he always does this, when they’re dressed up, when he knows he’s fast enough to outrun her, in his breeches.

“Do we have to go to this,” Cassandra sighs as she walks--chin high, back straight, hands at her sides--and he shrugs, keeping pace in front of her.

“Mom says they’re important.” 

“ _We’re_ important.”

He laughs; she raises an eyebrow.

“Not as important as them, apparently.”

Cassandra laughs. 

She very much doubts that.

**…**

**[now]**

 

The coronation, when it happens,when the dragons are dead and there is time for such things again, is done on the castle walls, in full sunlight. Whitestone Castle did not fall, did not crumble, and stood despite the thing below to see a summer again.

Half of the jewelry on her fingers was Delilah’s once. Her crown is new- the original melted down or lost or stolen or destroyed in the panic- no one is quite sure which, but that’s alright. The crown is set with Whitestone itself, so pure white it was almost glowing, untouchable and imbued with power- the first of it that had been mined since the Briarwoods were killed. The city had, technically, legally, been in a regency since her parents were killed.

Her brother is a creature of the world, now, but she is still a creature of the city, of the land, of the _stone,_  it had sunk its fingers into her long ago, refusing to let the last de Rolo leave their ancestral land. It held her here, those long years, unyielding and terrible, and she will reclaim it, in the sun and in front of her people.

The bounty of stone, the plenitude of masons, had leant itself to the city developing an epigraphic habit, and Cassandra watches as her name is carved into the oldest part of the city walls, a single chisel stroke at a time. The words will weather, will fade, as surely as the names carved hundreds of years before hers will, but Cassandra will always live here, in the sun and in the stone.


End file.
